How He Found America

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JANUSZ KAMINSKI can close his eyes and conjure up the picture of a teenager sitting in the hushed hours after midnight in the living room of a small apartment in Wroclaw, Poland. A television set is on, bathing both the room and the boy in a flickering glow. The young man, of course, is himself. He must have been about 16 at the time, he thinks, though he's not really sure. Certainly it is sometime in the late 1970's, when the Communist world was approaching twilight, not that anyone knew it.

On the flickering television screen, to the crunch of gravel and the twang of country rock, is Richard C. Sarafian's ''Vanishing Point.'' Barry Newman plays Kowalski, a drugged-out, alienated, authority-hating hot rodder who has made a pointless bet that he can deliver a car halfway across the country in just a few days. When the redneck cops close in, he purposely plows the car into a pair of bulldozers rather than surrender.

''Perhaps in the minds of the Communist government, the reason it was allowed to be shown was that it was seen as a decadent American movie,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''Under the circumstances, it was viewed as negative and a criticism of America. But the people who were responsible for putting on the television programs in the system at that time were not the dumbest. I think they were able to slip this movie through because it appeared to be criticizing capitalism. But it really wasn't, and I think they knew that.''

Mr. Kaminski lives in Southern California now, one of the most respected cinematographers in Hollywood, a two-time Oscar winner -- for ''Saving Private Ryan'' in 1998 and ''Schindler's List'' in 1993 -- and the husband of an Oscar-winning actress, Holly Hunter. He recently directed his first film, a religion-based thriller called ''Lost Souls,'' with Winona Ryder and Ben Chaplin, that is to open next Friday, and he is hard at work on the cinematography of ''A. I.,'' a science-fiction thriller that will be the next film of his most frequent collaborator, Steven Spielberg.

It is a long way from that late night in Wroclaw, but when Mr. Kaminski, 41, was asked to think back over his life and choose one of the movies that has meant the most to him, that has had the most profound influence on his intellectual and creative life, he settled on this 1971 drive-in cult flick.

Even now, when he looks back on his life, he still feels Barry Newman's Benzedrine jitters throbbing through his veins.

''I am so curious to see this movie again,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''You know, I have not seen it in more than 20 years, not at all. But I have this great recollection of thinking as I was watching it, 'Wow, this is what America is all about; this is what freedom of expression is all about.' Here is an individual who is willing to sacrifice, even to sacrifice his own life, for the sake of his idea of freedom and independence.''

Mr. Kaminski was sitting in the front row of the otherwise deserted 100-seat screening room that New Line Cinema (which will be distributing ''Lost Souls'') maintains on the first floor of a Beverly Hills office building on a trendy stretch of Robertson Boulevard. It was a weekend afternoon, and he was dressed casually, a black polo shirt over green corduroy pants. Though he has lived in the United States for two decades (having left not long after he first saw ''Vanishing Point,'' to attend college in Chicago and begin a career in cinematography), a trace of the Polish accent still clung to his tongue, but lightly.

In a Class With 'Easy Rider'

The print of ''Vanishing Point'' that was being shown was not the best; actually, it was a fading videotape projected onto the screen. Much of John A. Alonzo's evocative cinematography of the American West was rendered bland. But the movie was always a bit rough, even when it was brand new, disdaining the kind of slickness that constitutes so much film craft today. Besides, the images in the New Line screening room couldn't possibly be worse than those that must have appeared on a small television set in Poland in the late 70's.

As the film started, Mr. Kaminski leaned forward as if trying to get as close as possible to the screen, studying the dusty roadscapes through small, rectangular glasses that rigidly clutched the bridge of his nose.

In his memory, he puts ''Vanishing Point'' in a class of other films that he saw around the same time on late-night television: Dennis Hopper's ''Easy Rider'' (1969), Robert Altman's ''Three Women'' (1977), Jerry Schatzberg's ''Panic in Needle Park'' (1971).

''These were movies that influenced me and, I think, millions of other young people all across Eastern Europe,'' he said. They all were slipped in under the guise of exposing American decadence and drug abuse, but they spoke to the young Mr. Kaminski and others in another, more romantic language.

''This is the way we learned about the world, we Eastern Europeans -- from the movies,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''The majority of the kids like me growing up in Poland under Communism, we thought that America is, you know, the place to be. For me, I saw America not as this country of plenty, this country of wealth, where everyone has a car and everyone has a house, but as a country of freedom, where the individual is free, the ideology is free. That is why I so much wanted to come here.''

Yet there was a certain amount of looseness in the system in those days, Mr. Kaminski remembered. ''Poland was kind of a paradox among Eastern European countries then because it allowed for a certain form of freedom of expression,'' he said. Unlike the region's other Communist countries, Poland allowed some farmers to own their own land, for people to set up small businesses in the cities, and for stealth apparatchiks -- like those programming the late-night movies in Wroclaw -- to sneak in a little American freedom, as long as it was presented in the cloak of American decadence.

To watch ''Vanishing Point'' now with Mr. Kaminski is like recalling two vanished worlds: that of Poland in the late 70's, caught in the ferment just before Solidarity was born, and that of the United States of nearly a decade earlier, the Vietnam War still raging, the 60's youth culture fraying at the edges.

A Nihilistic Mystery

Even in its heyday, ''Vanishing Point'' was not much more than a cult favorite, raw and perplexing. At its heart, it is a nihilistic, psychological mystery. What is this Kowalski all about? (Are we meant, for instance, to remember Stanley Kowalski from ''A Streetcar Named Desire,'' or is the name just a coincidence?)

Why is he a pill-popping renegade? What induces him to make a meaningless suicidal bet with his drug dealer to drive his car to San Francisco in an impossibly short time? Why, when the police try to slow him down, does he only go faster and more recklessly? And why, in the end, when they finally have him trapped in a small dusty crossroads in rural California, does he choose to kill himself -- death by bulldozer -- rather than knuckle under? After all, no one has been killed. He's only facing a traffic ticket.

Kowalski is the frontier loner, the rugged individualist, as refracted through the hipster ethos of the early 70's, the antihero as stubborn, self-destructive casualty of the 60's. It's ''Thunder Road'' in bell-bottoms and love beads.

''The idea was completely surreal for us, that a person could be hired to take a car across the United States and to be paid for it,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''So completely unreal because to us, of course, we would all want to do it. Such freedom. What a vacation.''

Another point struck Mr. Kaminski as he watched the weatherworn faces peer from behind dust-flecked storefronts on the main street of a rundown rural town. ''This is not a glamorous depiction of America, but it feels very real,'' he said. Many of the movies that linger in the memory from that period -- ''Bonnie and Clyde,'' ''The Last Picture Show,'' even Mr. Spielberg's ''Sugarland Express'' -- were set in this same sort of landscape of rural clapboard seediness, he said, the sort of America that you do not see now in the movies, which tend toward fantasy worlds and sentimental landscapes.

''I think this face of America is still out there,'' he said. ''I think if we get on the freeway and go just an hour outside of Los Angeles, you will see it. But we have stopped looking at it. Filmmakers have stopped looking at it.''

Mr. Kaminski was rapt as he watched the film. ''It is obviously very much a picture of its time,'' he said, and not just because of its attitudes. The camera work, for instance, feels old-fashioned with its zooms and quick shifts in focus and the musical montages pasted over greeting-card sunsets. ''But I don't know, it is still working for me somehow,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''The action scenes are very good. This car chase is fantastic. I do not think it feels dated at all.'' Kowalski is screeching around hairpin curves just ahead of a line of police cars, gravel flying, dust swirling everywhere.

The Chase as Tabloid Story

In at least one way, though, ''Vanishing Point'' today feels like a movie very much ahead of its time. A blind radio disk jockey called Super Soul, played by Cleavon Little, hears about Kowalski's cross-country run and turns the story into a full-blown media event, tracing his progress, helping him outwit the local police and inflating his essentially pointless adventure into a romantic anti-establishment gesture. At times, one can almost imagine it as grand opera, with Placido Domingo, perhaps, singing the role of Kowalski. It is impossible to watch it today, Mr. Kaminski said, without seeing in it the pre-tremors of O. J. Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey and Elian Gonzalez and every other hyped-up tabloid media frenzy of the last quarter of the 20th century.

But the film's ending was, and remains, the crux of its appeal: the explosive and defiant embrace of death before submission. ''I am just attracted to those kinds of movies,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''Movies that end tragically, but not really. Because, you see, Kowalski got what he wanted. He was willing to fight for his freedom and to die before losing it.''

It is the ''Thelma and Louise'' ending, but without ambiguity.

''I was a teenager, you know, and you are so much more idealistic when you are younger,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''For me, the idea of committing suicide on screen had no relevance to real life; it was just a romantic idea. And I do see myself as a romantic person. You know, the love affair is always tragic, the antihero is always tragic. So that is how I viewed myself at that point, when I was growing up, and some of that view has not gone away, even being here after 20 years.''

He is also struck, as a filmmaker in solid standing, a figure of importance in Hollywood, by how difficult it would be to try to make ''Vanishing Point'' today. In his own work, he has been to the meetings with studio executives, talked to other filmmakers, met with investors, heard the long, sad wail of the marketing department.

''You couldn't have a movie like this today, no way,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''They would not let you. They would say: 'Why does he have to die? The audience will not go for it.' You know, movies are so much safer now, because there is too much at risk, too much money involved, too many of the wrong people making the decisions, somebody who is an accountant at a studio. The audience will not go for it, they say. I think the audience will go for it. I think the audience is ready for anything, anything that moves or entertains them. Look at 'American Beauty.' It was narrated by a dead man, but audiences loved it because it was a good, good movie.''

Connections to the Past

There is one scene in ''Vanishing Point'' he remembers quite vividly. Kowalski is running short of pills that he needs to stay awake and keep ahead of the police when he meets up with a chopper-riding ''Easy Rider'' type who agrees to share some of his stash. The young man takes Kowalski home to his ramshackle trailer on the edge of the Nevada desert, and there, riding around on a motorcycle in the sandy scrubland, is a beautiful young flower child with long blond hair. She is blissful and buck naked. (Later she offers herself to Kowalski. Innocently. Hey, it's just for fun. But he's too much of a gentleman.)

As the scene appears, a slow, bittersweet smile spread across Mr. Kaminski's face. American freedom, distilled to its essence -- at least as far as a teenager in Communist Poland was concerned.

''This movie still works for me, just like it did when I was younger,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''I understand now, being a more mature person and older and a filmmaker, that there are problems with the movie and a certain infantile way of thinking. But at the same time, after seeing it again, I think it is a really, really good movie.''

And as he looks at those two people -- himself today and himself as a young man back in Poland -- he can feel the threads that connect them and even, he thinks, how his emotional response to movies like ''Vanishing Point'' have made a man of the youth.

''Of course, I can see that we are the same person,'' he said. ''But it is a person who has evolved from being a teenager who lived in a Communist country in a very protected environment to a man who is in his 40's who lives in a different country, in a different system, but who still has many of the same values. Now I am in America, but I am still idealistic; I am still romantic; money still does not dominate my world. I am the same person, but I am still searching. I am not content yet.''

A Secondary Career

Since making ''Saving Private Ryan,'' Mr. Kaminski has been working on his directorial debut and also taking the first steps toward a side career shooting television commercials. He enjoys it, he said, and it gives him more freedom. He does not have to shoot two movies every year, as many cinematographers do, but can pick the one that most appeals to him and work only with the directors he most admires, like Mr. Spielberg and Cameron Crowe (for whom he shot the 1996 ''Jerry Maguire''). And then, every two or three years, he hopes to direct a movie of his own, just to keep moving forward, kicking up the gravel.

'A Great Comfort'

Definitely, he said, he identifies with Kowalski, even today. ''I have a very clear sense of independence,'' he said. ''I make sure that I am not connected with any single studio or any single company. I am purposely structuring my life and my career so that I can make the choice with each movie about what I will do and who I will work with. Having this freedom allows me to be brave, allows me not to settle for the more safe resolution in terms of my work. And that is a great comfort, not being afraid.''

Not that he intends to go barreling into bulldozers on a dusty highway.

''But I definitely still see the romance of it,'' Mr. Kaminski said. ''I see it from an intellectual point of view. I would not go there myself. I am adult enough to understand. But still, it is tremendous, this idea of freedom, of dying for freedom. There is a reason that I maintain myself as independent and a reason that I always try to take chances. It is like Kowalski. Yes, I may fail. But what if I fail, but I win because I tried?''

Watching Movies With

This article is the second in a series of discussions with noted directors, actors, screenwriters and cinematographers. In each article, one filmmaker will select and discuss a movie that has personal meaning. The first article, which appeared on Sept. 15, focused on the director Quentin Tarantino.

How He Grew: A Kaminski Sampler

Janusz Kaminski's major films, along with information on ''Vanishing Point.''